An exemplary application for this invention is for large spacecraft radar antennas. For example, large antennas are under development which are made of lightweight materials which can be deployed, e.g. by inflation, to the approximate desired shape after the spacecraft has been deployed in orbit.
Because of the large size, such antennas may not provide sufficient precision to yield the desired beam quality. Nominal distortions of the structure will degrade the radar beam pattern. Although the desired beam quality can in principal be achieved by electronically compensating for the antenna distortion, the success of such compensation is dependent on the availability of a technique for rapidly and precisely determining the locations of the beam elements.